“I . . . um, was just helping my wife. She lost her shirt.” Shit! Yeah, that sounds so much better. Behind him, Emma giggled as he took her arm and pulled her in front of him. “Hush,” he whispered in her hair. The situation already looked bad enough. Was it his imagination or was everyone on the damned plane grinning at them? He pushed her into her seat, wanting to escape the scrutiny as quickly as possible.
He had just taken a deep breath and started to relax when Emma leaned against him. “Why are your pants unbuckled?” He looked down in horror to see his pants hanging open. In all of the confusion, he had tucked his shirt back in his pants but had failed to button them and buckle the belt. No wonder everyone on the plane had been looking at them. He might as well have been high-fiving as he walked back to his seat. My God, they had barely been flying for thirty minutes and he had already managed to embarrass himself more on board than he had in a lifetime.
He buckled his pants knowing his face was flaming red. Emma’s hand landed on his thigh as she started randomly talking about every topic from this month’s Cosmo to the dog she had when she was a child. When she started drawing circles on his leg that were coming dangerously close to his cock, he clamped a hand over hers, stilling the motion. She propped her chin on his shoulder and asked, “Why don’t you have a girlfriend? Is it because you’re so . . . uptight?”
He turned to her, finding that he had to scramble to keep up with her rapid-fire subject changes. “Uptight? I have women in my life.” He hated that he sounded so defensive. Did everyone at Danvers think he was such an asshole? Since when was it a crime to have a good work ethic? He was courteous and considerate to everyone—well, except Emma. With her, he tended to give as good as he got.
Her eyes rounded as if he had just admitted to having the formula for world peace. “You do?” she gasped. “Who? Wait—you’re not talking about your sister, Ava, are you?”
So maybe he had been going to mention Ava, but now there was no way he could. “Just different women, okay? No one you would know.” When she gave him a disbelieving look, he added, “I have a lot of sex, Emma, more than you do, I’m betting!” And . . . all eyes in the seats around them were trained on them again. He had managed to make an ass of himself while Emma sat beside him looking like an innocent angel. When she opened her mouth, he said, “Enough. Don’t say anything else. Just go to sleep, stare off into space or anything that doesn’t require us talking.” To drive his point home, he leaned his head back on the headrest and closed his eyes. He didn’t intend to open his mouth until they landed in Miami, no matter what she said.
Chapter Six
Brant was absurdly grateful to feel the plane touch down at the Miami International airport. Beside him, Emma yawned, stretching her arms above her head. Eyes off the tits; nothing good can come of that. “Feeling better?” he asked her.
She gave him a sleepy smile that still appeared a bit loopy, but he thought she may finally be coming down from the laughing gas that the dentist had given her. “Yeah, just a little tired.”
He stood, grabbing both their carry-on bags. She made a halfhearted attempt to take hers from his hand, but he assured her that he would carry it. He didn’t think she was steady enough yet to add anything else to the mix. He stepped back in the aisle of the plane and motioned for her to precede him out. What happened next was something he would look back on for the rest of his life with equal parts confusion, horror and amusement—when he was able to remember it without shuddering.
Emma stumbled a few times on the way up the jet bridge, so his focus was primarily on making sure she didn’t fall on her face. There were several police officers and a dog standing at the end of the bridge as the passengers walked by. Brant knew it was standard procedure at many airports to have drug-sniffing dogs stationed where new passengers entered the airport facility. He barely spared them a glance as he steered Emma toward the terminal. When the dog suddenly started barking frantically, he looked around to see what was going on. He was shocked immobile when the dog stopped at his feet, still barking urgently. What the hell? He was so shaken up that he dropped both carry-on bags. Emma’s hard-shell bag dropped to the floor with a loud pop and seemed to explode open.
He looked down practically in a daze as skimpy panties covered every inch of the floor around his feet. He could barely hear the chaos around him over the roaring in his ears. Suddenly, he was being pulled off to the side and asked repeatedly if he had a prescription for the medication he was carrying. What the hell were they talking about? He wasn’t carrying medication! When he shook his head, struggling to answer and confused by what they were asking, they seemed to take his response as an admission of guilt. He felt hands on his shoulders and cuffs snapping around his wrists. Through the haze, he thought he was probably hallucinating because he was sure he saw Emma on the ground trying to wrestle something from the dog’s mouth. The police were shouting at her, but she persisted. Was that? No, surely not. There was no way his assistant was wrestling with a narcotics detection dog for a . . . pink penis?
“Emma,” he yelled.
As the police pulled her away from the dog, she gave one final jerk and held up a bright pink, phallus-shaped object in her hands. He knew it was a vibrator because the buzzing sound coming from it was unmistakable. As she waved it in victory, he noticed white things that appeared to be pills sticking to the sides of it. “Fuck!” This was a damn bad time to learn that your assistant had a drug problem.
Necks craned as they were led in handcuffs toward the security office in a back hall of the airport. Their bags were deposited on a table and the police started sifting through them. One of the officers pointed to Emma’s bag, asking, “Whose bag is this?”
Emma stuck her hand up as if she were in school. “It’s mine. I’m sorry about the mess, but I had to pack in a hurry.”
The officer held up one of the white pills that were scattered in the bag. “What kind of pills are these?”
Emma looked at him, clearly puzzled. “I don’t know the name of them. I just got them before I left home.”
The officer called the numbers off one of the pills to the other officer, who entered them into a computer. “Miss, these are Vicodin. Do you have a prescription?”
Brant wanted to cry when she shook her head no. “I gave it to the man at Walgreens and he gave me these. He said take one or two and I took two . . . I think. My mouth was hurting really bad; I had a root canal this morning.” Shit, that explained a lot. She had taken pain medication. Apparently, it was some strong stuff. She still seemed half out of it, even after fighting with a dog.